[Vision2020] Liberal Religion and Abraham Lincoln

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Greetings:

This was my radio commentary for this week in honor of one of the Presidents of President Day.

Nick Gier

LIBERAL RELIGION AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN

In 1976, as a way of celebrating our nation’s bicentennial, I published an article on the religious views of Thomas Paine, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. I was inspired to write this piece when I heard on the radio that someone had called Thomas Paine “a dirty little atheist.”

I’ve always wanted to continue my research on the religion of the presidents, and with this column on Abraham Lincoln’s religion, I’ll get a head start on the bicentennial of his birth next year.

Just like Washington, Lincoln never mentions the name of Christ in his writings, and he also followed the first president in a preference to seeking the guidance of Providence rather than a personal God.  And also like Washington, when ever they were asked whether they were Christians, both refused to give an answer.

When an aide to Washington had drafted an address to some Indian leaders, Washington crossed out the word “God” and replaced it with “Great Spirit above.”  When Willam Herndon drafted a speech for Lincoln, the president asked him to replace the word “God” with “Providence” because the former word implied a personal deity.

There is a mural in the Capitol’s rotunda that depicts George Washington kneeling in prayer in Valley Forge.  Washington’s own pastor claimed that he never took Communion, and that he never knelt in prayer as required by Anglicans of the day.  The mural, therefore, is a pious fiction.

There is a story that when news of Lee’s surrender reached the White House, Lincoln and his cabinet all knelt spontaneously in tearful prayer. Lincoln’s treasury secretary Hugh McCullough later testified that this claim was “not only absolutely groundless but absurd.”

While living in New Salem, Illinois, Lincoln associated with the town’s skeptics and free thinkers, who were very critical of the preachers of the Great Revival.  This intellectual circle read many of the Enlightenment thinkers, but the favorite among them was Thomas Paine.  

Although there is some dispute about the matter, it is said that Lincoln wrote a critique of Christianity modeled on Paine’s infamous Age of Reason, but that it was burned by a friend for fear that it would ruin Lincoln political aspirations.
Jesse Fell, a close friend and Republican leader, once stated that Lincoln did not believe in “the innate depravity of man, . . . the Atonement, the infallibility of the written revelation, the performance of miracles, [or]. . . future rewards and punishments.” 

Other sources indicate that Lincoln did not believe in the deity of Christ or in the special creation of human beings.  He was especially critical of the idea that God forgives sins, because that doctrine would undermine the idea that moral laws are absolute.  Jesse Fell contended that Lincoln “maintained that law and order, not their violation or suspension, are the appointed means by which . . . Providence is exercised." 

David Davis, Lincoln’s presidential campaign manager, maintained that Lincoln "had no faith, in the Christian sense of the term,” but that he “had faith in laws, principles, causes and effects." Lincoln adhered firmly to his “Doctrine of Necessity” and scholars believe that this fatalism came from his parents’ belief in predestination, a belief so extreme that their church did not believe in missionary work.

When Lincoln ran for a seat in the Illinois State Legislature, he was accused of being an infidel and of calling Jesus an illegitimate child. At that time Lincoln refused to respond to these charges.

When he ran for Congress in 1946, his opponent the Rev. Peter Cartwright raised the same issues.  This time Lincoln did respond by saying that it was true that he was not a member of any church, but it was not correct that he denied the truth of the Bible.  
This statement did not take care of the problem, because when he ran for president in 1860 all the ministers but three in his hometown opposed his candidacy.

After receiving a Bible from some former slaves grateful for their emancipation, Lincoln wrote to them saying: “All the good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong.” This statement is consonant with the first American presidents, who defined Christianity as, first and foremost, a religion of morality.  As John Adams once said: “I believe that all honest men are Christians.”

Recent scholarship has proposed the view that Lincoln’s religious views changed with the death of his son Willie and the carnage of the Civil War. These scholars suggest that Lincoln came to believe that God intervened in history to eliminate slavery and to punish both the North and the South for their sins. The further claim that Lincoln also became a Christian at this time is most likely untrue.

Despite the some disagreement among historians, it is clear that Lincoln was a religious liberal in both beliefs and principle. The original meaning of the Latin word liberalis is “pertaining to the free person.” A liberal society would always protect the freedom of its citizens to form their own religious beliefs or reject religion altogether if that is their choice.

James Madison summed up this liberalism best in this concise motto: "Conscience is the most sacred of all property."